Arthur Hugh Clough

This study traces the poetic development of Arthur Hugh Clough through a methodological approach based on close readings of his most important works with separate chapters devoted to the three great poems of his maturity: The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich, Amours de Voyage and Dipsychus. Attention is also given to the socio-cultural context and the religious and political debates which contributed in shaping Clough-s artistic and ideological vision, particularly through the influential figures of Thomas Arnold, John Henry Newman and Ralph Waldo Emerson. That Clough remains to this day one of the most neglected nineteenth-century writers is all the more remarkable given the importance of his intellectual contribution to his times and his radical questioning of religious faith, traditional values and poetic norms.

Renzo D'Agnillo is Associate Professor of English Literature at G. d'Annunzio University, Chieti-Pescara (Italy). He is the author of Bruce Chatwin: Settlers, Nomads and Exiles (2000), The Poetry of Matthew Arnold (2005) and editor of D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow: Re-readings of a Radical Text (2010). He has published articles and essays on various nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors, including Charles Dickens, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, G.M. Hopkins, Elizabeth Gaskell, D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.

Preface - Rugby Verses - Oxford Verses - A Questioning Spirit - Political and Satirical Verses - The Bothie of Tober-na-Fuoisch - Amours de Voyage - Dipsychus - Conclusion.